Recreational and similar vehicles have been known and used for years for traveling, camping and other purposes and also have been used as multiple purpose vehicles that permit individuals to be transported and to live for short periods of time in the vehicles. Because these vehicles are driven over public highways, there are limitations on the widths of the vehicles, and such limitations restrict the amount of interior room that is available for living when the vehicle is parked off the road. To overcome these limitations and to provide more useable living space when the vehicle is parked, there have been designed expandable rooms that can be extended while the vehicle is parked and retracted while the vehicle is moving over the road. Such expandable rooms greatly improve the utility of the vehicles for not only recreational purposes, but also for use in transporting small groups, such as entertainers, who spend a considerable amount of time on the road and move from location to location frequently. Some of these vehicles are quite luxurious, and in addition to their usefulness in maximizing the available space, aesthetics are very important.
Since the expandable rooms are quite massive, the mechanism for expanding them and then retracting them requires a considerable amount of power. Typically, expansion and retraction is accomplished using hydraulic power since most of these vehicles have hydraulic systems available for other purposes. The known systems therefore use linear actuators to expand and retract the room, but known systems are designed in such a way that the actuators and the associated components are visually exposed and therefore undesirable from an appearance standpoint. In addition, the known systems are such that the linear actuators capture valuable space and therefore take away from otherwise useable space. There is therefore a need for an improved system for accomplishing the expansion and retraction of expandable rooms in an efficient manner with a minimum of space required for the operating mechanisms. There is also a need for providing operating system in which the mechanisms can be hidden from view and thus greatly improving the overall appearance of these vehicles and making them more appealing to the users. There is a further need for such operating systems that will assure that the four corners of the room will be extended in a synchronized manner so as to properly extend the room smoothly and efficiently.